Product manufacturers must be able to control the images that are used to portray their products in order to protect their brand. In particular, companies must be able to ensure sufficient resolution and image clarity, prevent the introduction of copyrighted or inappropriate content, and ensure that their products are displayed in a manner which does not tarnish or otherwise dilute the company's image. As such, true product-based personalization of credit cards has not been feasible due to the perceived inability to control the type and quality of the personalization.
Some credit card issuers have offered their customers a “photo card” which is essentially a regular credit card with a one-inch square box onto which a customer-supplied photo is printed. Users can submit their personal photos by either stopping into an approved banking center or by mailing in the picture along with a request form. This approach is offered as a fraud protection tool rather than a personalization tool and is obviously not product-based. The aforementioned issues regarding image control are not a concern in this case since the goal is merely accurate customer identification, and not product image.
Other credit card issuers have offered credit card users the limited customization option of being able to select from among certain approved static images to be displayed on the face of the credit card. Examples of such images include favorite sports teams and universities, which tend to invoke a sense of pride or accomplishment for the customer. However, such static images are only generic impersonalized company-approved images. They are not truly customized images in the sense that they are created using customer-specific information, nor are they product-based images. And unlike the photo card example mentioned above, credit card issuers will not allow their customers to simply submit pictures of their automobiles or other purchased products for imprinting on the face of their credit cards. Such a practice would compromise the product manufacturers' ability to carefully control the manner in which their products are presented to the public.
As with universities and sports teams, certain consumer products tend to invoke a sense of pride or accomplishment for the customer. Automobiles are one such example. However, since credit card issuers will not accept photographs of their customer's specific products (e.g., automobile), as they would for the photo card discussed above, there is currently no way for customers to truly customize their credit cards with an image reflecting the specific characteristics of their purchased product. Accordingly, there is a need in the art for enabling the product-based personalization of financial instruments such as credit cards.